Responsive democracy baffles some officials

BY RONALD FRASER
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Published: March 12, 2017

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Ronald Fraser

The protests following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, including the Pussy Hat Brigade, have less to do with alternate facts and the border wall and a lot more to do with Trump’s autocratic, my-way-or-the-highway outbursts — a presidential style rejected by both our tyranny-fearing Founding Fathers and the majority of voters in November’s election.

To guard against an autocrat in the White House, our ancestors in 1787 replaced the political power once held by sovereign monarchs in Europe with a popular sovereign, placing the nation’s political power, collectively, in the hands of the people.

With this power shift, each American now shares responsibility for the manner in which political power is wielded and a civic obligation to challenge abuse of power in Washington. “Pussy hats,” the pink knitted headwear that emerged as a symbol during the Women’s March in Washington in January, also symbolize personal readiness to push back against authoritarianism.

Historically, engaged Americans have aimed their anger against major close-to-home issues, not anti-democracy presidents. Tax protests in the late 18th century were followed by abolition, woman’s suffrage and workplace conditions protests in the 19th century. Citizen activism took off in the 1800s, so much so that some observers warned that the spread of popular sovereignty fever endangered democracy itself.

By the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, in his famous essay, “Democracy in America,” wrote, “In America the principle of the sovereignty of the people is neither barren nor concealed, as it is with some other nations . . . If there is a country in the world where the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people can be fairly appreciated . . . and where its dangers and its advantages may be judged, that country is assuredly America . . . (where) the people reign in the American political world as the deity does in the universe.”

But de Tocqueville also tempers this glowing account by pointing out some dangers associated with America’s rush toward mass democracy.

“It is a constant fact that at the present day the ablest men in the United States are rarely placed at the head of affairs … I hold it to be sufficiently demonstrated that universal suffrage is by no means a guarantee of the wisdom of the popular choice. Whatever its advantages may be, this is not one of them.”

Fifty years later, Princeton University professor Woodrow Wilson sized up the hectic late 19th century period of social and political change by declaring that government by the people was not working, that an elite public workforce was needed to make democracy work.

“There is,” he wrote, “scarcely a single duty of government which was once simple which is not now complex; government once had but a few masters; it now has scores of masters.”

He declared that the founding principle of popular sovereignty of the people stood in the way of a more efficient government.

“The very fact that we have realized popular rule in its fullness has made the task of organizing that rule just so much more difficult … An individual sovereign will adopt a simple plan and carry it out directly … But this other sovereign, the people, will have a score of differing opinions.”

Here is the lesson de Tocqueville and Wilson provided so long ago: With the election of Trump, we are once again, as a nation, engaged in a tug of war between autocratic efficiency and popular government.

Efficiency has never been the foremost goal of our democratic government. Rather, democracy is designed to be responsive to the values and traditions near and dear to liberty-loving citizens. Pussy hats are a reminder that public officials who do not understand the difference do not understand democracy.

Because it is a dangerous step toward tyranny, the office of the president is no place for an autocrat.

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